Davies Snatches Pole On GT5 Challenge Return

Former Protyre Ginetta GT5 Challenge champion Mark Davies grabbed pole position for Saturday’s first race of the weekend on his one-off return to the series at Snetterton.

The Ginetta GT Supercup regular fought out a chopping and changing 20-minute qualifying session with SV21 driver David Pittard, Davies briefly topping the times early in the session before Pittard dismantled the Optimum Motorsport driver’s quickest lap by 1.020s.

The places changed back once again five minutes later as Davies moved back to the top on his fifth lap of the session, 0.157s faster than Pittard who set about changing that on his next tour of the 300 circuit.

Pittard went fastest overall in the second sector, and by the end of the lap he had re-asserted himself as the pace-setter, the lap becoming the first of many big improvements in times from drivers as the rain that hit the circuit prior to the session continued to dry out in the final minutes.

Brad Bailey was the first to interlope the top two, only for Davies to go fastest once again by over half a second. The 2011 champion looked to have secured pole position as the clock reached zero, but Bailey then leaped to the top of the times to dip under the 2m21s margin.

However, Davies once again managed to go one better, taking pole position finally with a rapid effort of 2m19.2.116s, Will Burns suddenly making his name heard late in the session by jumping up to second place with his final effort to spilt Davies and Pittard for a front row slot, 0.801s slower than the pole-sitter.

Tor McIlroy was fourth fastest with his final lap to bump Bailey down to fifth, making it a positive session for Optimum Motorsport as Thiago Calvet made it three of their cars in the top six. Ben Hyland was next up ahead of Clive Richards, while Gary Simms qualified his G20 machine in ninth ahead of Jake Giddings.